Leadership Matters: Commit to progress
Move from a culture of grudging change management to one of empowered progress by including your team members in the process.
All progress is change, but not all change is progress. No one plans to change or desires to change, but we embrace what we view as progress.
There is a powerful and important connection between solid leadership, sales success, true customer loyalty and organizational culture improvements. All are achieved by effectively positioning ideas, recommendations, solutions, products, services and even ourselves as progress—not change—in the minds of those we intend to lead or to inspire to positive action.
Shift Away From Change Management
The business term “change management” has been around for a good long while. The term relates to initiating significant change within an organization’s processes. Such change can include anything from altering organizational culture to embracing diversity to modifying an individual’s work tasks to increasing morale and loyalty to an organization’s mission and vision. The goal behind “initiating significant change” may be solid, but the problem begins with the term and focus on “change management” rather than “progress leadership.” We do not want managers to manage our change. We want leaders to lead our progress. In a time of continual transformation, committed leaders should focus on inspiring and influencing progress, not supervising change. Likewise, leaders should position challenges as opportunities, not merely problems to be solved.
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